


What did my heart do with its love?

by nwtons



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Others Mentioned - Freeform, The end is so sappy i hate myself, sad tobio, sunshine hinata, u know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 15:03:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6429025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwtons/pseuds/nwtons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What did my fingers do before they held him?<br/>What did my heart do with its love?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	What did my heart do with its love?

**Author's Note:**

> i havent written ANYTHING in MONTHS and i needed to write SOMETHING.  
> so this was written. 
> 
> i'm trying to get back into writing and i thought, hey, what better way to do that than to make myself cry with kagehina feelings at 11pm? right? right. i am crying. 
> 
> enjoy (hopefully)~
> 
> p.s. unbetad. sorry for any mistakes <3

_“The loneliest moment in someone’s life_   
_is when they are watching their whole world fall apart,_   
_and all they can do is stare blankly.”_

The dull sound of a volleyball hitting the hardwood floor with a resounding thud, followed by a collective gasp from the spectators in the stands above. Tobio looks over his shoulder, ready to snap (again) at the person who had missed it (again), but his scowl wavers at the emptiness of the court beside him.

No one had missed that toss.

No one had even _tried_ to hit it.

His gaze snaps to the group of people standing at the far end of the court. They’re only a few feet away, realistically, but it feels like they’re miles apart, with a giant crack in the floor separating them.. right down the middle.

And as they all refuse to meet his eyes, it feels a bit like his heart is being split in two as well. Except, it doesn’t hurt at all; there is, however, an ache somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach that he can’t really place, exactly, but it feels like he’s being swallowed up from the inside; and it’s a little hard to breathe and keep his hands from shaking with the force of it.  

He watches them play afterwards, with a towel tossed over his head so they can’t see his face, the raw emotion written across it, the hurt that’s surely swimming behind his eyes.

These are his teammates, he thinks.

Or, well… They _used to_ be.

And he’s the only one to blame for that.

…

_“The floor seemed wonderfully solid._   
_It was comforting to know I had fallen_   
_and could fall no farther.”_

“Tobio, don’t you have practice right now?”

His mother stands in the doorway of the living room with a sad sort of smile on her face, which she tries to play off as anything but what they both know it is.

He does, in fact, have practice right now.

Or he would, if he was still attending practice; but as it so happens, he stopped doing that nearly a month ago.

He’d tried to go back, once, right after the incident he’d rather not think about; it’s enough that the moment his life fell apart is on constant replay while he sleeps restlessly; he doesn’t need to plague his mind with it while he's wide awake, too.

The others had been cold and distant. The coach had told him to sit out again (and again after Tobio had asked to practice tossing), had told him to just practice his receives in the back while the others had a practice match with each other. And he’d listened, of course, thinking that it would blow over eventually and he’d be back on the court with his team soon. Only, practice had ended without him being allowed to make a single toss to someone other than a wall, and afterwards he’d been left alone in the changing room while the others had all piled out together with excited shouts of getting something to eat together after that amazing and fun practice match.

On the way home that day, with his stomach growling in hunger but feeling too sick to even think about eating anything when he got home, Tobio decided that he was finished with all of it. And as he lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom and thinking about all the things he used to have but took for granted, he realized that this is what people meant when they talked about hitting ‘rock bottom’.

…

_“The silence depressed me._   
_It wasn't the silence of silence._   
_It was my own silence.”_

The Karasuno volleyball team is full of incredibly loud people. Tobio learns this on his very first day as an official member, when Tanaka all but tackles him to the floor as soon as he’s slipped the team jacket on, howling loudly in congratulations.

They’re all encouragements and praise and words of advice, casual displays of physical affection in the form of a back slap or a high-five, or, once, a hair ruffle from Sugawara, accompanied by the kind of soft smile only he can pull off. He’s not exactly good at receiving any these things, but it’s easy to get used to them, to not flinch when a hand lands on his shoulders to pat them, to raise his arms for a high-five after a successful attack, to say ‘thank you’ when they tell him ‘good job’ at the end of the day.

He wishes he could be more like them.

He wishes that touch came easy after such a long time of avoiding it altogether. Wishes he could initiate the hair ruffles with Hinata when the other manages to spike one of his tosses (a frequent occurrence, now, but still no less impressive than the very first time), or a “Nice spike!” with Tanaka, or a “Good job” with Yamaguchi.

But he’s nowhere near like them, and the truth of the matter is that he probably never will be.

He just wishes the realization of this didn’t hurt as much as it does.

…

_“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes,_   
_yet they would open up,_   
_unfolding quite wonderfully,_   
_if only you were interested in them."_

“You don’t yell at me as much as you used to.”, Hinata tells him one day.

They’re having a break outside the gym during afternoon practice, and Tobio flicks his gaze up from the floor to see the other boy looking back at him with a curious expression. He looks away just as quickly, pretending to tie his shoelace that hadn’t been loose in the first place, if only to have an excuse to avoid that face.

“Yeah well… You don’t mess up as much as you used to.”, is what he ends up saying, and he’s proud to hear that his voice sounds less shaky than his hands are, bunching his fingers together so Hinata wouldn’t notice and laugh.

It’s true, though. Hinata has grown so much in the few months they’ve been playing together. He hits almost every single toss Tobio sends him at practice, even when he sets a bit too high or low, quicker than they’re used to, further than he had before.

Hinata is always there, always willing to try and spike, always calling out for “ _One more!_ ”, no matter how many they’d done beforehand.

He catches himself, sometimes, when Hinata misses a toss; the words are on the tip of his tongue, “ _Faster! Higher! Match my tosses!_ ”, but they taste sour and burn like acid and he swallows them back down, balling his hands into fists and refusing to go back to how he used to be.

He’s not that person anymore.

He won’t allow himself to be.

…

_“How we need another soul to cling to.”_

They lose against Aoba Jousai and it’s like middle school all over again. He sees the faces of his former teammates looking at him from the other side of the net, with satisfied smiles on their faces, as if they’re telling him “We’ve defeated you again”, and the voice inside his head chimes in as well, with a nickname he hasn’t heard in quite a while, whispering “King” into his ear over and over again.

He sits on the bus with his head cradled in shaking hands, trying to keep himself from screaming out at the top of his lungs. There’s something crawling its way up his throat, and he wonders, briefly, if that’s his heart trying to escape before it’s too late and there’s nothing left of it at all.

There is a thud to his left, and out of the corner of his eye he sees bright orange hair and wide, brown eyes peering at him behind sweaty bangs. Hinata frowns, shifting closer in his seat, and before Tobio realizes what’s happening, there are arms winding around his neck and a face pressing into his chest, soft strands of hair tickling the underside of his chin.

“You did good.”, he hears the other boy mutter, muffled by the fabric of Tobio’s jacket, where his mouth is pressed against him. “We _all_ did good. And we’ll do even _better_ next time.”

The words ease some of his shakiness, and he swallows past the lump lodged in his throat, feels it slide its way down and settle back into place in his chest. It’s comforting, and he can breathe normally, and he can’t hear that voice anymore because his ears are focused on Hinata talking to him about how they’re gonna work their butts of at practice tomorrow, and the day after that, and all the way until the Spring Tournament.

His arms move on their own accord, wrapping around Hinata and bringing him a bit closer, until he can breathe in and smell the remnants of the court on the other, a scent that seems to linger around him no matter where they are or how many hours have passed from the last time they’d even been on the court.

He breathes, and squeezes Hinata a little bit closer still.

…

_“I lean to you,_   
_numb as a fossil._   
_Tell me I'm here.”_

“You don’t mean that.”

Hinata stares at him with this look, caught somewhere between the intense (and sometimes, terrifying) determination he gets during their matches, and a heartbreaking kind of sadness that makes it hard for Tobio to keep looking back.

The words taste familiar in their bitterness, and he can already feel the ache he’d thought was long gone by now, or at least buried deep enough to never be able to resurface again.

He shakes his head at Hinata, taking a step back from him, even though it feels like he’s leaped a mile away.

“You _can’t_ mean it. I don’t believe you.”

Hinata straightens up, and it feels like the air around them has changed somehow. It makes Tobio feel alert and dizzy at the same time, as he stares helplessly at Hinata, who seems to have made up his mind about something.

“I’ll prove it, then.”, he says.

Tobio blinks, and when his eyes open again, they catch sight of brown ones staring right back, from mere inches away. He can feel the tip of his nose brushing against Hinata’s own, and hands pressing against his shoulders, warm breath fanning across his rapidly heating skin.

He swallows, and it sounds loud in the quiet room, like glass shattering; he tries not to breathe too loudly, because this feels like something delicate, easily broken. And he’s too careless, always has been, too clumsy with feelings.

He couldn’t even protect his own heart. How can anyone expect him to take care of someone else’s?

“I like you.”, Hinata repeats, sounding less afraid than he had a few moments ago. Tobio opens his mouth in order to repeat his own again, but he doesn’t even get the chance to make a single sound come out.

Warm lips press against his own, and his eyes fly wide open before slowly slipping shut as the hands on his shoulders slide up and across his back, to the nape of his neck where they play with his hair. Hinata kisses much like he does everything else in life- full of determination and boundless energy, but with a focus that can’t be rivaled by even Tobio himself.

When they pull away, Hinata cradles his face in small hands, his thumbs rubbing along Tobio’s cheekbones in such a gentle way that the taller’s heart squeezes, feeling like it’s just grown twice its original size, too big for his chest.

But it’s a good kind of hurt, now.

He doesn’t feel like he’s drowning, and there’s no voice, and he doesn’t want to run away from this.

“I like you.”, Hinata tells him, again, just for good measure. “I’m _in love with you_. And I _mean_ it. You have to trust me on this, like you trust me and I trust you back with literally _everything_ else.”

Tobio’s nodding, now, without even realizing it. He leans down, head resting in the crook of Hinata’s neck, breathing in deeply and feeling the same way he had a few months back, on the bus ride home. There’s pressure behind his eyelids, and he wonders, briefly, if he’s been crying this whole time, or if he’s just started out of relief.

Because that’s what he’s feeling right now, amongst other things. Relief. His chest feels light and the cracks in his insides feel like they’ve been filled with warmth after such a long time of just feeling numb, and he thinks, “I wish I could feel this way for the rest of my life.”

…

_“What did my fingers do before they held him?  
What did my heart do with its love?”_

He suppresses a smile at the feeling of small, cold hands sliding under his shirt and across his chest. It’s too early to be awake, but Hinata has always been an early riser, and Tobio can’t find it in himself to complain about waking up when he gets to have this.

“Tobio~”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Tobio reaches out blindly, hand finding soft hair and tugging on it lightly, getting a giggle in response from somewhere above him. A weight presses down on his stomach- Hinata straddling him to get his attention, probably. Of course, it totally works, as they both knew it would.

Opening his eyes against the sunlight seeping in through their curtains, Tobio squints up at a grinning Hinata, whose chin is pressed to his chest, and whose hands have found their way to his neck, poking at the marks he’d left there a few hours ago in a way that is too focused to be anything but self-satisfied. He wraps his arms around Hinata’s smaller frame, squeezing him tight against himself even when half-hearted protests are mumbled into his shirt and fingers pinch at his shoulder.

“What.”, he mutters groggily, fighting off the remnants of sleep with a gravelly voice.

Hinata hums and scoots forward, smacking a loud kiss against his cheek, just under his left eye. He has this smile on his face that makes Tobio think of ridiculously sappy things that he’d never admit to thinking, at least not out loud.

He does, however, lean up to nuzzle Hinata’s nose with his own, eliciting another giggle from the other that goes straight through his heart every time he hears it.

Tobio thinks that he’ll never get used to this; feeling so full of love he sometimes feels like he could burst with it, in a giant mess of feelings and words that he still can’t bring himself to say, to admit feeling with all he is. But maybe that’s not a bad thing at all, if he thinks about it. If it means getting to see that beautiful smile and that beautiful face, getting to hear that voice whispering his name in his ear and making him shiver…

Tobio could live with that.

He could probably live with it forever.

**Author's Note:**

> this is dumb
> 
> i am dumb
> 
> these two are dumB DAMMIT WHY DO I CRY ABOUT THEM SO MUCH WHYY


End file.
